What Suits
by SisterTenenbaum
Summary: She's still trying to find it, but is he? Spike and Buffy post-Not Fade Away.
1. Chapter 1

Title: What Suits

Summary: She's still trying to find it, but is he? Spike and Buffy post-Not Fade Away.

Rating: Mature

Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with anything having to do with the television show _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_

Author's Note: This story is post-Not Fade Away, non-comic compliant, more character-study than plot, and may very well go nowhere.

* * *

When she sees him, walking down the alley toward her with a slight limp impeding his usual sprawling gait, her first instinct is to laugh, so she does.

"Don't know what's so funny about it," he growls, closing the distance between them and turning to lean against the wall, his shoulders hunched every so slightly.

"You know," she says after a moment, wiping her eyes where her mirth has become too much for her head to contain. "I don't either."

He reaches into the pockets of his pea coat.

_Pea coat?_

Withdrawing a cheap plastic lighter and a pack of cigarettes, he shakes one out in just the way she remembers and her head spins a little. Then he lifts it to his lips to light and the tremble in his hand is different enough to bring her back down to earth.

"So what brings you to these parts, slayer?"

"That's what you ask me? After ten years?"

"I'm sorry," he turns to her with narrowed eyes. "Shall we have a go?"

"I'm here on business," she responds crisply.

"Figured as much. Plenty of beasties crawling around here to keep a slayer busy."

"No, not on council business," she clarifies while avoiding his eyes. "I'm here for actual business. Like business-ey business."

"Yeah?" he looks at her, exhaling a large cloud of blue smoke into her face. She has to fight not to lean into it. "What sort of business you into these days?"

She describes her job as a merchandise buyer for a small department store based out of Oregon in excruciating detail, watching his eyes glaze over as he slowly ceases to listen. Even so, she finds she can't stop talking. His fingers twitch at his sides. She wants to take them in her own.

"And Dawn?" he finally interrupts her.

"In Scotland," she answers; relieved to have a reason to give up describing the recent crisis over the price of 500-thread count sheets she had dealt with at the store. "With Giles and company."

"And you, wandering lonely as a cloud in the trees of the great Northwest," he looks at her long and sharp. "Why?"

"I needed a break," she replies, trying for flip. "And I'm not lonely."

"No," he replies slowly, looking up at the sky. "No, I shouldn't think you'd be."

Something is insinuated here, she's sure of it, but she doesn't dare respond to it. The more blatant accusations will come soon enough.

"Why didn't you send me a letter?" She asks the question abruptly, staring at the ground.

"What?"

"I mean, the thought never crossed your mind? Hey, I remember this girl that once told she loved me in the middle of a collapsing sphere of lava and death right before I spontaneously combusted. Maybe I should drop her a line? Something like, "hey, turns out I'm a proverbial boomarang of life. I just. Keep. Coming. Back." These last three words fall to the ground like wooden beads, landing with a hollow sort of ring that feels as empty as it sounds.

"A letter?" he asks after a long minute.

"It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you could say over the phone. I understand that. But a letter…"

"I needed a break," he replies, no trace of levity in his voice. "And I'm not ready."

"How can you not be ready?" Her question comes out as a gasp, and she is horrified to find tears coming down her cheeks. "It's been ten years. What more do you need?"

"That's the question, isn't it? What more? What more do you need, what more can I stand? And somewhere over the last ten years, I've found the answer. I love you, Buffy, and I always will, but I can't stand anymore. I'm tired."

She has a flash in her mind to a white back, draped over something gold and the smell of smoke and a voice, so much smaller than what she thought it would be. _Can we rest now?_

"So you just give up?" She tries for tough now. Tough love. Tough something. "That's not the Spike I knew."

"The Spike you knew wasn't a real person." He takes another shaky drag. "He was a story made up by a sad git who wanted to be more than he was. But I'm afraid our mistress time has proven my inability to keep that story straight. So it's just William now, and I find it suits better."

"You do?" she follows up lamely, unsure of what to say. This conversation is playing out so differently than she remembers. She shifts her weight, but can't find her footing.

He doesn't reply to this. He takes another long drag and stubs the cigarette out against the brick wall. Carefully, he opens the pack and deposits the half-smoked stump back into the cellophane paper.

"Well, Buffy, you're charming as ever," he declares, stowing the pack in his pocket and pushing himself off the wall. He's still fluid, but there's a certain weight to his movements she doesn't remember. "But I'm off like a ship in the night, destination unknown and territory unmarked and all that rot."

"But… I thought…" Her lameness is astounding.

"I know, dear," he leans in, holding up her hand and pressing dry, papery lips to it. Up close, she is shocked by the naked fear in his eyes.

"I'm…" _incapable of finishing a sentence._

"I hope you find out what you are," he replies after a long moment. "I already know what I am."

She used to.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: What Suits

Summary: She's still trying to find it, but is he? Spike and Buffy post-Not Fade Away.

Rating: Mature

Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with anything having to do with the television show _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_

Author's Note: This story is post-Not Fade Away, non-comic compliant, more character-study than plot, and may very well go nowhere.

* * *

When they meet again, she's got the upper hand. Literally.

Straddling him, her hand raised against him the way she promised herself it would never be again. One stinging smack rouses him.

He awakens with a roar, grabs her arm, starts to twist. She feels a small pop before he comes to himself.

Dropping her arm as if it's on fire, a deep shudder goes through him before his entire body goes limp. He turns his head to the side, closes his eyes, actually appears to be baring his neck to her.

She ignores this new weirdness.

"What kind of go?" she asks, the question that's been plauging her for the two days it has taken her to sniff out his hidey-hole.

And it is a hole, more suited for the kind of scum she used to exterminate on a nightly basis than a champion back from the grave, atoning for the sins of a century. She would have expected more leather. Fewer threadbare blankets piled in the corner of the stinky basement of a crackhouse.

He simply sighs in response. He's naked under the thin layer of wool covering him. His eyes are sunken and she remembers that limp.

But she's righteous and right and he must pay, pay, pay.

"What kind of go?" she insists. He sighs again.

"Whatever you say," he mumbles simply after a moment.

She grinds against him in response. She reaches down with the hand she has just used to punish him and attempts to strip the blanket off of him. But she's sitting on him and things get tangled, so it's difficult to get rid of the layer between them.

By the time she's got them free, he's looking up at her with saucer eyes.

She reaches down and cradles his balls in her hand. They are papery like his lips, dry and cold, and his dick, when she reaches it, isn't much different. Limp. Like his hands. Like his body. Like his walk.

She looks around the room as she works him over in her hand, wondering why the moldy white tile on the ground feels so familiar.

That's where the familiarity ends, though. He doesn't do anything like she remembers. Shivers a bit, closes his eyes and whines high in his throat, throws a lilly-white arm over his face.

In other words, reacts much like the dead fish that he appears to have become.

She raises her hand against him again, gives him another slap to the face.

He flops in response.

"Why?" She almost shrieks at him, shaking his shoulders roughly. "Why are you acting like this?"

A thought occurs to her, rocks her so deeply she bites back a scream.

"Is there someone else?" Her hand rises with the volume of her voice. "Have you been unfaithful to me with some horrendus bitch, you-"

"Buffy," he catches her hand in his, holds it tightly. His voice, when he really speaks for the first time all morning, shames her with its even tenor. "It's time to stop all this foolishness."

He reaches down, holds her hips in his hands, displaces her easily from his body (for all his trembling and limping), and stands up. Before she can reach out, he reaches down, scoops up a pair of jeans, and slides them on.

He leaves the flies undone. _An invitation? _Runs his hands through his tufted white hair. _Exasperation?_

"I've been faithful," he says low and even. "Though to what I don't know."

He sits down, scoots until his back hits the wall. His soft penis spills out of his jeans, mocking her from its nest of golden-brown curls. _Not enough._

"You know, Angelus always used to say that all William wanted was a bonny lass, a sweet little thing to swing around the Maypole and make babies and kiss on rainy afternoons."

Well, she's little.

"'Course, Angelus also always used to say that William was a wanton slut who was gagging to roll over and spread his legs for the biggest Maypole around and I might as well accept my place in life was on my back."

She simply blinks at this.

"And I reckon I've spent a lot of years now trying to figure out which one was true. But towards the end there with Angel, I thought maybe it was both. Now, we both know from experience exactly how big Angel's Maypole is, but he never was much of a bonny lass. And in all my years on this pile of stone and pain, I figure you're the only one I ever did meet who comes to being both."

Silence.

"So now you know. You're all there is, Buffy. The only horrendus bitch in my unlife."

At twelve, sixteen, twenty-four, she never would have expected to be so happy to hear someone call her that. Maybe that's what her mom used to mean when she told her to grow up.


End file.
